Our lawyer’s office building was on Seymour Street, near Robson Square, and with so many people out in the streets, I paid extra attention to keeping my wings from making their presence known. I wondered just how many of the people walking around me were Paranormals, and how many were normies, going about their lives with no clue as to the myriads of amazing beings that live hidden amongst them. The world was so very different without the filter of ignorance tinting my perception.

Aunt Lin led me into a building that seemed to shout at the wealth of its residents the moment we stepped inside, and having grown up in a far more financially modest home, I was just a little intimidated by the ostentatious displays of wealth. The reception area was cavernous with black marble floors that were polished until they gleamed, cream-colored walls, and a massive crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, bathing the room in soft light. Between us and the pair of elevators was a very fancy and sleek redwood reception desk.

Behind that desk sat an attractive, twenty-something blonde woman with a cultivated customer service smile, and I could feel her eyes on us, assessing our worth, as soon as we stepped inside the lobby. She was wearing a crisp and clean crimson blazer that was well-fitted to her figure, with a black silk chemise underneath. I couldn’t see what else she was wearing due to the desk, but I had no doubts that it was a designer outfit meant to impress and illustrate wealth and class. Even in my somewhat nice clothes, I felt immediately out of place, and my aunt, with her leather jacket and jeans, stood out like a sore thumb.

“Good morning, ladies, did you need help finding your way?” the perky blonde asked as she glanced at us. She was all smiles, but I got the distinct feeling that underneath that, she very much doubted whether we belonged in this building at all and would be more than happy to show us the door.

“We have an appointment with our lawyer, David Cosgrove, he’s expecting us, and I know the way,” my aunt replied dismissively as she guided me straight past the reception desk and to one of the elevators. Once we were inside, she immediately pressed the button for the fifteenth floor, which seemed to be the top floor of the building as well, if the numbered buttons were any indication.

As soon as the elevator doors closed and we started to ascend, I leaned against the wall and let out a long sigh. “I feel horribly underdressed for this place.”

My aunt, who didn’t look uncomfortable at all, shrugged her shoulders. “This building is mostly home to high-profile businesses and professionals who can afford the ridiculous leases and are here for the visibility that the Robson Street area provides. Law firms, plastic surgeons, private medical practices, investment firms, and that sort of thing, so it’s not really a building for those who can’t afford those types of services. We could have come here dressed to the nines, but I don’t see any reason to flaunt my wealth. The only expectations that matter are those you willingly place on yourself.”

“Is that more ancient Valkyrie wisdom?” I asked morosely.

Aunt Lin smiled as she shook her head. “No, kiddo. That’s just centuries of experience talking. Trying to make everyone else happy will never make you happy. You can’t make everyone happy anyway, so save it for the people who truly matter to you. If their happiness and the expectations they hold for you truly matter that much to you, though, you can choose to place those expectations on yourself, and you’ll put out the effort to make sure you meet or exceed those expectations.”

I was still thinking about that advice as the elevator dinged to announce our arrival at the fifteenth floor and the door slid open. Following my aunt into a small foyer that split off left and right into hallways with plush red carpet, extravagant-looking light fixtures, and the occasional frosted glass and chrome doorways, we turned left out of the elevator and stopped at the only such door on the right side of the hall. The frosted glass of the pair of double doors bore golden letters spelling out, Cosgrove, Sullivan, Shaw, & Associates. Below the name of the law firm, and barely visible to the naked eye, was a star with the letters PN under it.

Well, that confirmed that we were probably in the right place, as did the faint tingle of magic as we stepped through the doors and into the waiting room beyond. I might not have great magic potential, but I could at least sense it when I was close. I needed to be really close, but my aunt had told me that I could probably improve if I decided to train what little magic potential I did have.

The waiting room we stepped into seemed to be as lavish as the rest of the building; what looked like hardwood floors, expensive artwork on the walls, and black leather couches for clients to relax in comfort. I barely had time to take any of it in since the receptionist, a very pretty brunette woman who looked human as far as I could tell, cheerfully called out, “Good morning, Miss Hansdotter. And you must be Miss Demarco. David said to send you both in when you arrived.”

So, I found myself being led by my aunt into an office with the name David Cosgrove on the door. His office was decorated similarly to the waiting room we had just left, though it had an amazing view of the city through the massive windows. Aunt Lin led me to a black leather couch facing a large and impressive oak desk, as the man behind the desk seemed to assess me with a look.

David was handsome, if you’re into tall men with toned bodies and chiseled features, which I guessed my aunt probably was. He had dark brown hair and eyes so dark that they looked nearly black, and he boasted a pair of ram-like horns atop his head and a pair of black bat-like wings that made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t human. Even though my aunt had warned me beforehand and told me that he was in a happy relationship, I still found myself a little bit nervous around the Incubus.

I wasn’t sure if it was because I still wasn’t really used to all this Paranormal shit or because this man had a powerful aura about him and was the one who apparently handled our finances, but I had to carefully control my breathing as Aunt Lin made the introductions. “Raven, this is our lawyer, David. David, this is Siv’s daughter, Raven Demarco, as I told you on the phone.”

“It’s… umm… nice to meet you, Mr. Cosgrove,” I offered as I extended my hand across the desk to shake his.

To my surprise, he kissed my hand rather than shaking it, a brief and phantasmal touch of his lips that made me feel just a little bit awkward. “It’s a pleasure, Raven. Please, call me David. Lin and Siv were friends long before they were clients. I was deeply aggrieved to hear of Siv’s passing.”

His expression was so earnest and genuinely sad that I felt like I had just dropped a weight from my shoulders that I hadn’t even known was there. “Thank you, David. She and my father died when I was really young; I don’t even really remember them clearly. You probably knew her better than I ever could.”

“She was a wonderful woman,” he told me with a faint smile as he released my hand. “She was very caring and wanted to help others. She did a lot of charity work before she and Lin had their falling out. I assume she went to work for the PDA like she wanted to?”

“Yeah, I was told she died stopping an Archdemon from bringing an army of Demons to our world,” I replied as I settled into the comfortable couch.

“That sounds like something she would do, alright,” he said with a sad sigh and a nod of his head. After a moment of reflective silence, he spoke up again. “We’ll all have to get together some time for something more casual, maybe you could both meet me and Coral for dinner sometime. Oh, and you’ll both be invited to the wedding this summer, of course.”

The sad expression on Aunt Lin’s face lifted somewhat as he mentioned the wedding. “That sounds great, David. It would be nice to catch up with you and Coral. It’s been a while. I’ll give you a call to arrange something when Raven and I are back from our trip.”

“You can call me anytime, you know that, Lin. That goes for you as well, Raven. Siv was a good friend, so if you need anything I can help with, don’t hesitate to call. Anyway, I won’t keep you ladies long since I do have other appointments and I’m squeezing you in this morning. I have all the contracts and paperwork that we discussed ready for you to sign. So, I just need some signatures, and you can both get to whatever else it is you need to do this morning.”

David was as good as his word. As soon as Aunt Lin and I had signed the legal documents for the hotel ownership, investments, and several other things that I hadn’t even considered, we were able to leave his office with promises to meet him and his future wife, Coral, for dinner or something once we returned from our training trip. I liked him; he was kind, charming, obviously valued his friendship with my mom and aunt greatly, and he was nothing like I had expected when Aunt Lin had informed me he was an Incubus.

Once we left David’s office, our first stop was the bank that my aunt dealt with. Sirius Trust wasn’t one of the major banks, or at least it wasn’t to normies, but rather one much like David’s law firm. It was a multinational banking institution that catered only to Paranormals and had a lot of experience with those who were immortal or had very long lifespans. Most normies would just think it’s some small local bank because they wouldn’t recognize the name or logo on the debit cards or checks.

We had more papers to sign there for me to replace my mother as the other signatory and beneficiary of the joint account my aunt had mentioned. Then we needed to get me a checkbook and a debit card for the account, and I needed to give them a copy of my signature for their records as well. I had never signed so many papers in one day in my life before this, and it was still only midmorning when we were done.

So, now I had a debit card and checkbook, and I didn’t even need to wait for the permanent versions to be sent to me. Apparently, they had someone with Divine magic that would produce them in-house, and they were specially tailored to each individual client. I’m not talking about just the account numbers and stuff, but the debit cards had spells on them to keep anyone but the person for whom the card was created from using them. If anyone but I tried to use my debit card at a bank machine or point of sale card reader, it would automatically get flagged as stolen, and the PIN would become invalid. They also offered credit cards with a similar feature.

It seemed very secure, and I was very glad about that when I saw the account balance for our joint account. We were very wealthy, and that was just going by the account balance. It didn’t even factor in the investments or the properties like the hotel, and I was informed that we did own more properties than just the hotel.

I was actually feeling very overwhelmed by it all as we left the bank and got into my aunt’s car to head toward Metropolis at Metrotown, the largest mall in British Columbia. It was a bit of a drive since it was out in Burnaby, but the mall was huge with over 330 stores, and it had a couple of the higher-end shops for Paranormals that Aunt Lin wanted to take me to. She might not like to flaunt her wealth, other than maybe her car, but she believed that quality was important, and she frequently shopped there for clothes that would accommodate her wings.

Our first stop was a store called New Frontiers, a store that specialized in devices and accessories for Paranormals of the Air and Water varieties. Most of their products were regular normie tech that had magical enhancements, special apps, and such for Paranormals who spent a lot of time in the air or underwater. I guess my aunt thought that I needed a better phone and stuff than what I had.

We ended up buying me one of the new, top-of-the-line Samsung phones with a case that was enchanted to protect it against impacts and being submerged in water. Not just against impacts like dropping it on the floor and stuff either. With this case, my new phone could take being hit with a sledgehammer, I know, because they demonstrated. It also had a special battery that lasted longer than the normal phone batteries, and I bought a portable charger, earbuds, and an aviator smartwatch to go with it.

The watch and earbuds had similar enchantments as the phone case, but other than that, the earphones were really nothing special. They weren’t even Bluetooth, just the old-fashioned jack into the phone kind, but that would save me from losing an earbud in flight or something, and I wouldn’t have to worry about charging them. Like the watch and the phone case, they were a simple black in color, so they wouldn’t stand out as anything special.

The smartwatch was special, though, and came with all the bells and whistles, including a long-lasting battery, Bluetooth connectivity, and a titanium case. The face showed not only the time, but also a compass and altimeter, and I could receive and make calls using it and the earbuds instead of having to pull out my phone while in flight. It also had apps for a GPS moving map, aviation weather, health monitoring apps, and a flashlight function. I was very happy with that purchase.

I also saw a very nice diving watch for Mermaids and other aquatic Paranormals with similar features, and I decided to buy it for Alice as a thank you gift for all her help since the night we met. She usually doesn’t wear a watch because she has to sleep underwater, and good diving watches were expensive, especially something with added magical protection like this one had. I decided to give it to her later that night when we went on our first date.

While my aunt and I ate what she considered a light lunch in the food court, I switched my SIM card from my old phone to my new one and got it and the new accessories properly connected and set up. Unfortunately, I found myself still hungry when we were finished, but as we gathered our purses and stuff to leave the food court, she quietly told me, “We’ll come back and get something at one of the other places in the food court after our next stop. We don’t want to get too much attention from the normies, and a couple of hours should be plenty of time to eat again without people here who might remember us.”

When we stepped through the illusion of an unused and sealed-off mall space, I found myself in a large shop that seemed completely devoted to women’s clothes, footwear, and accessories. It was wall to wall clothes in a multitude of different styles, and it seemed a little overwhelming. We had barely gotten past the illusion that masked the true nature of the store before a vivacious and grinning redhead with big fox ears atop her head and a multitude of floofy fox tails approached us.

“Lin! It’s been a while. Are you looking for anything specific, or are you here for your friend?” The multi-tailed fox woman asked cheerfully.

“Raven, this is Imogen, she’s a Kitsune, and a style consultant for Paranormal women who have special clothing needs. Imogen, this is my niece, Raven. She’s recently come into her wings, and since she’s part-Demon, she might need your help for other reasons as well,” my aunt explained.

Imogen quickly turned her attention to me, seeming to take in every detail of my face, body, and clothing as she slowly circled me. “Hmm… the backless tunic is sensible enough for someone with wings,” she said thoughtfully before reaching out to take my right hand and gazing at my long, black nails. “Those aren’t painted. Demon claws, huh? Is that as well as you can conceal them?”

I quickly nodded, “Yeah, I can’t retract their mass any further than that, and I can barely get them to look like the shape of human fingernails. They still look a bit like claws.”

“They do,” the Kitsune agreed with a thoughtful hum. “You might as well let it all out, now that I know what I have to work with. I’d like to see the whole picture, so I know what I have to account for in terms of wings and any other non-human body parts.”

I nodded and then relaxed the mental hold that was keeping my claws and wings retracted. “Thankfully, it’s just the claws and the wings,” I told her with a sigh as both were revealed.

“And the eyes,” she noted, confusing me. My eyes were blue, just like me mother’s and Aunt Lin’s and there were no slit pupils or anything to make them look demonic. At my obvious surprise, she smiled and explained. “No, they don’t look too abnormal, dear. The color is brighter and more intense than your aunt’s eyes and just a little outside what you would see on normies with blue eyes. I can probably make that and the claws work for you, though. How do you feel about piercings?”

How do I feel about piercings? I had followed the punk rock scene since I was a little kid, and I had never even been allowed to get my ears pierced. I had considered getting some piercings while I was living in the dorms, but I never found the time between studying and spending time with my friends. Now, I wasn’t even sure if I could get them because of my Demon regeneration and resistance to sharp, pointy objects in general. I was a little jealous of Alice’s piercings, to be honest.

I sighed and shook my head. “I’m not opposed to them; I’ve always wanted some, actually. Well, not anything extreme like a tongue piercing or my… private areas, but other stuff, yeah. If you can find a needle that will pierce my skin and can manage to get something in the hole before my regeneration closes it up, all the power to you. Being part Demon kinda sucks for things like that.”

Imogen hummed thoughtfully again before speaking. “We have some enchanted needles. I’ve used them before on other hard-skinned Paranormals, including a few Demon-blooded, but it’s going to hurt a lot more if you’re aligned to Death.”

Fortunately, she seemed to accept my subtle deception that being part Demon was responsible for both the hard skin and the regeneration. I was trying not to reveal too much about Valkyries here, and from behind Imogen, I noticed my aunt giving me an approving nod as she offered, “No, it seems like she lucked out there. We did some tests, and she’s not aligned to Death.”

I noted that she didn’t say what element I was aligned to, but it was probably better just to let Imogen make her own assumptions there. As long as neither of us used magic actively around magic users (as if I could yet anyway), they most likely wouldn’t be able to tell our elemental alignment unless they had mage sight. If that was the case, though, she would have already known I wasn’t aligned to Death with a glance.

With my approval on piercings given, Imogen told me her idea for me to use fashion to blend in with the normies, much as Alice did. She was thinking of giving me a Goth/punk look when I was in public for several reasons. The main reason was that I was naturally pale, and with my long, black hair, she thought the aesthetic would suit me. It would also make people think that I painted my nails black and shaped them into a claw shape to fit my image, rather than that being what they really looked like. Finally, she thought that a healthy amount of eyeliner and mascara would make my bright blue eyes really pop, and people would most likely assume that I was wearing colored contacts.

Then the Kitsune measured me to get my sizes and took me to a back room, where she introduced me to a younger Kitsune with only one tail named Ashley, whom she introduced as her daughter. Ashley looked to be close to my age and greatly resembled her mother, meaning she was very pretty. Imogen then left me in Ashley’s hands to do the piercings while she and Aunt Lin went to search for some exercise clothes that would accommodate my wings for our trip and clothes to suit my new style.

Ashley seemed nice, if a bit talkative. She told me that she started helping her mother with makeup and piercings and such last year, and she really enjoyed helping other Paranormal girls find ways to blend in among the normies. She also did tattoos, if I was interested in that sort of thing. I thought that would take a while, but she didn’t exactly use the traditional method.

What Ashley did was create an image in her mind with Divine magic and then bind it to the person’s skin using a spell that was loosely based on a minor seal, which usually leaves a mark on the sealed person’s skin somewhere. This version of the spell had taken out the seal part and focused on just binding the image she had in mind to the person’s skin. It sounded pretty clever and was almost painless while giving a person a tattoo that can be either permanent or dispelled later if the person has second thoughts.

I thought, “What the hell, go big or go home,” and asked her what she thought would suit me. I may have been mischievously thinking of the look on Lydia’s face when I returned home with piercings and a tattoo. All of it was reversible anyway, and I was really looking forward to adopting a more badass punk image.

It took a little more than ten minutes for Ashley to give me a rockin’ sleeve tattoo that covered my right arm from shoulder to wrist. From shoulder to elbow, the image boasted a version of me, black wings and all, rocking out on a cherry red electric guitar with musical notes and red roses in the background. The red roses and musical notes continued down to my wrist, with a prominently displayed skeletal hand giving the devil horns with the words ‘Rock on’ below it on my forearm. I absolutely loved it.

The piercings took longer and hurt a bit, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle in terms of pain. Luckily, Ashley had quick hands because those holes were starting to heal as soon as she took the needle out. We went with five piercings per ear, two in each lobe and three helixes, to make it look like I spent some time building up this image, and then she put a couple of spike-tipped barbells through my left eyebrow and a black and silver skull embossed stud in my right nostril. I decided against any lip piercings or anything too extreme for now, but I did get a navel piercing with fairly simple black studs that would stand out against my pale skin.

With the piercings finished, Ashley looked through some of the makeup kits they sold and found one that was right for the image we were going for. I could do a basic look easily enough with my makeup at home, but she showed me how to get a more gothic look that would work well with my pale skin and the image I was going for. By the time she was done with me, the winged eyeliner and smokey eyes with mascara darkening my thick eyelashes, my eyes looked an almost artificially intense blue in contrast. Some black lipstick helped finish the look, and Ashley encouraged me to play with different goth or punk looks at home with my new makeup kit.

With that, she was finished with me, though, so we headed back out to the front of the store to see how Imogen and my aunt were coming along with my new style. They had a lot of things for me to try on, and I spent most of the next couple of hours doing that and getting a feel for what look we were going for. Most of the stuff leaned more into Goth territory, but there was some decidedly punk stuff and stuff somewhere in the middle as well.

For footwear, I could wear most of the shoes I already had, and they showed me a pair of classic high-top sneakers and steel-toed, knee-high combat boots that fit the image well and would be practical too. There were a lot of distressed jeans, cutoff shorts, short skirts, nylons, fishnet stockings, and leggings for my lower half. They also showed me some jewelry and accessories that leaned hard into the Goth and punk styles as well.

Since most of my issues were with my wings, we got me some backless halter bras and low-back bras with adjustable strap styles. Halter tops, band tees that had been converted to halter tops, gothic-inspired halter dresses, and even corsets were present for outerwear, but Imogen noted that corsets were all either low-backed or backless halter-style tops meant to look like corsets. They would all leave room to free my wings should I need to, and at least everything seemed to fit properly.

I was still worried about a jacket for rain or cold weather, though, but thankfully, it seemed like Imogen and my aunt had thought of that too while I was busy with Ashley. When I asked, Imogen revealed a studded black leather jacket and a classier, and definitely Goth-inspired, double-breasted black tailcoat. The coats were expensive, and that was as much because of the quality of them as the enchantments that the Kitsune had to place on them to accommodate my wings.

Apparently, she had enchanted them both to keep me warm in any weather, and so that when I let out my wings, they would pass through the back of the jacket as if it wasn’t there. She had used some sort of tricky Kitsune space-warping Divine magic for that, and I guess my aunt’s leather jacket bore the same enchantments. There was a duffel bag, too, with another type of space-warping spell on it that made it like a duffel bag of holding.

The jackets and the duffel bag cost us almost as much as everything else together, but my aunt felt that the cost was well worth it. Not only did I need something to keep me warm while flying, but the duffel bag would allow me to carry all our other purchases today and would severely cut down the amount of baggage we would need to take on our trip. It wasn’t like the expense was going to break us, and I didn’t mind paying for quality work and all the help that Imogen and Ashlely had given us. They had earned that consultant fee, too.

Getting my new image established had cost us most of the afternoon, and I needed to choose something to wear and put the rest in my duffel bag of holding. I chose to wear a burgundy faux corset, a red and black plaid miniskirt over fishnet stockings, a pair of fingerless black leather gloves, and my new combat boots, with the leather jacket over top. By the time we had paid, left the store, and were done having another quick meal in the food court, it was about time for me to head home for my date with Alice. I had a feeling she and the others were going to be surprised.